When Julia Gillard drew up the first blueprint of her revolution aimed at upgrading the country’s education infrastructure I’m sure she didn’t expect that school staff and parent organisations would be the ones doing the revolting.
Her flagship BER scheme is descending into chaos as new stories of construction companies filling their pockets at the expense of schools and communities continue to surface. Let’s not forget that there are many projects which have been a fantastic boost for schools, many projects where principals, teachers and parents couldn’t be happier with the outcome. But the rip-off reports continue to cast a shadow over this revolution.
How is it that one school can (quite-rightly) refuse to take an ‘off the rack’ template and instead tailor the building plans to suit specific teaching needs, while another is forced to say yes to something it didn’t even want in the first place?
How is it that the principals of non-government schools are (again, quite-rightly) trusted to take charge of BER quotes and spending, while some government principals unhappy with the outcome of their project struggle even to get a glimpse of the breakdown of costs?
Despite repeatedly being told about examples of waste and excess, Gillard insisted time and again that they were just a blip ... that we should be focussing on the positives and we shouldn’t be questioning a scheme that helped keep Australia out of recession.
Finally, a $14 million taskforce has been set up to deal with complaints. In our July 2009 editorial we said the BER was starting to look more like a house of cards than a sound investment in bricks and mortar. “We urge the Rudd Government to stand by its promise to punish states and territories caught artificially inflating prices,” was our call.
Nine months later and the result of all the warnings, outcry and complaints is a shifting of responsibility to a new ‘taskforce’. From the complaints so far, New South Wales appears to be the state with the most problems. A week before Gillard made the taskforce announcement; NSW Education Minister Verity Firth claimed a parliamentary probe into BER spending would reveal nothing, adding it had been heavily audited at state and federal level. She labelled calls for a formal inquiry as a “political stunt”. Firth told Parliament: “Late last year, the upper house in a scandalous and blatant political action demanded every piece of paper relating to the NSW government's delivery of the BER program.” She’s appearing to suggest that anyone who dares to speak out should just be grateful for the money, rather than having the gall to ask where it’s going.
Gillard has calls the taskforce a ‘further level of insurance’ ... well, insurance claims can take months to be settled, so here’s hoping schools who have been ripped off don’t have to hang around waiting for action.
NAPLAN TESTING TIMES
Boycotting testing has given the Federal Education Minister something of a dilemma that she believes may best be solved by commandeering parents and pitching them against teachers to deliver the NAPLAN papers.
As Australian Teacher Magazine went to press, Julia Gillard had yet to sit down with representatives from the Australian Education Union to discuss the concerns of teachers and work on a resolution to the problem.
In an argument probably more suited to the playground, Gillard seems to have resorted to name calling, branding teachers who back the boycott “selfish” for having the courage to take a stand and say enough is enough.
Is anyone else getting fed up of hearing the phrase ‘voted with their fingertips’ in relation to the MySchool site? Teachers have voted too, they’ve voted to boycott NAPLAN in an effort to stop schools being named and shamed via test statistics.
Public school educators have been urged to defy the boycott and Gillard has upped the ante by claiming “the best teachers” are the ones driven by NAPLAN data. Whichever side of the argument you support there’s no denying that most teachers go into the job because they want to do the best for students.
Dividing teachers along the lines of “the best” and “the selfish” is petty and using parents to help resolve a dispute instead of sitting down to negotiations is not exactly setting a good example. Rightly or wrongly, teachers are backing the boycott and appear to just want Gillard to consult with the profession over the future of MySchool.
MATHS/SCIENCE
GOOD maths and science teachers are being an endangered species. The lure of big money in the commercial sector is attracting top graduates and gives schools little chance of competing for the cream of the crop.
Add to that, a decline in the number of students taking maths and science degrees in the first place and it’s easy to see why education departments and looking at ways to attract fresh blood.
RMIT University has revised all its primary teacher education programs and is doubling the time spent on numeracy. Hopefully, by engaging younger students through confident, enthusiastic teaching, primary schools can help nurture the maths graduates of the future and stop this worrying decline.
JO EARP
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